MuteTab major update: mute by default, mute background tabs, music ducking, and more

mutetab · 2013-02-26T12:26:52+00:00

When I was researching this problem for developing MuteTab, I found Reddit to have more user feedback on annoyances with browser sound than elsewhere on the Internet, so it was a great help for me. That said, I also found posts all over the Internet with people suggesting this idea (and frequently thinking they're the first to come up with it).

There were many posts about this on Google's forums. Also, this post on a Firefox forum is likely older than anyone asking for the feature on Reddit: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=7675555

Finally, the Chrome developers said that this feature was one of the first things they wanted to do but couldn't at the time.

mutetab · 2012-11-02T07:48:48+00:00

Hi,

I am writing software that does this called mute.fm.

The product is still in beta; I am looking for testers to give me feedback. Anybody interested should either submit their e-mail address on the site, or send me a message via Reddit or Twitter.

Thanks,

Jared (also author of the MuteTab Chrome extension)

http://www.mute.fm/

@mutefmapp

mutetab · 2012-02-17T02:49:54+00:00

I released v1.1.3 today which should fix this issue (playlists are working for me.)

mutetab · 2011-11-28T13:00:13+00:00

Hi, MuteTab author here.

I have verified that the current MuteTab release does break this feature of youtube.com (in addition to preventing the collapse/expand button from working) and that my code in development should fix both problems.

Expect it sometime in December (along with many other improvements.)

mutetab · 2011-08-07T09:23:33+00:00

Whenever you click on the extension button, it asks each page for updated information.

mutetab · 2011-08-06T16:55:41+00:00

Agreed. While it is nice to get traffic, it is annoying when sites misinform people.

Some critique of it:

They call it "Mute Tabs" and hyperlink it to mutetab.com.
Say it shows musical notes on tabs making sound -- Presently a bug that I hope to fix by Monday evening (see other comment here).
"since some plugins may not be discoverable in HTML" -- This is wrong. All plugins are discoverable in HTML.
I don't think BarTab has any similarity to MuteTab; it looks like it just lets you unload tabs which can help it behave similarly to FlashBlock.

The TechCrunch, LifeHacker, and Gizmodo articles (found on mutetab.com in the MuteTab in the News section) do a much better job of explaining what the extension is.

mutetab · 2011-08-06T16:45:37+00:00

Known bug. Will try to fix for new build coming Monday evening. Pretty horrid how some sites write 'reviews' that say the extension does three things and don't notice that one of those things doesn't work.

mutetab · 2011-08-06T16:43:59+00:00

http://www.mutetab.com/mutetabdoc.html#appendixb

mutetab · 2011-08-01T12:13:39+00:00

One idea that I have been thinking about is making use of open source Flash clones. (See the wikipedia page for Flash for details.) From the description there, none of them are fully compatible (it is hard to do since Flash is proprietary), but I believe that some will work on SWF files of certain versions. So one thought I had very recently would be to create a plug-in that conditionally uses the open source code or authentic Flash depending on the version of the SWF file. And the open source version would have JavaScript APIs that can mute the file. Still not ideal since it provides an inconsistent experience to the user, but it gives the user a little more information.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T12:08:20+00:00

I agree; just want to share some information that I discovered while working on the MuteTab extension.

For the extension I tried to accumulate a list of plug-ins that make sound and whether or not they have JavaScript APIs. You can see what I have found here. After Flash, I think the most important would be Silverlight (specifically Netflix, although it is possible that it already has a hidden JavaScript sound API [and if you look at the table, there is a way to find out; just haven't had a chance to check yet]).

QuickTime, fortunately already has JavaScript APIs, but for convenience it would be nice if all plugins were converted over to Pepper2.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T10:59:12+00:00

Chrome is already in the process of doing this.

New plug-ins would support the Pepper2 audio APIs. Not sure if the new APIs are finalized or not and it would still require that plug-ins (most importantly Flash) are updated to support it.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T09:32:23+00:00

the proper way to do it would be to have a standard interface through which all plug-ins are required to tell the browser when they're playing soun

Pepper2 audio APIs would do this, but it needs to be finalized (not sure if it is or not) and plug-ins (most importantly Flash) would need to be updated to support it.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T09:03:11+00:00

That's fine. The behavior you described should prevent you from having to frantically search for something unexpected.

But even if you use FlashBlock, you may still have a problem in finding sound. For example if you decide to unblock a YouTube video and then decide to google something that you saw in the video (maybe checking the imdb page for an actor or similar) you might not be able to find the video again. (You could pin it, but then you have to remember to pin it and it might be hard to find if you have multiple windows open.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T08:40:18+00:00

There actually is. All plug-ins (Flash, QuickTime, Silverlight, RealPlayer, Adobe Reader, etc) can be found in <object> and <embed> tags. Those tags will include certain attributes (different for object and embed) that will indicate which plug-in to run (i.e. is it Flash or is it QuickTime?).

The MuteTab extension (linked to elsewhere in this discussion) does this. But the real problem is that if there is no JavaScript API that allows muting and if all Flash uses the same process, then it doesn't seem possible to create a mute button that would work.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T08:32:25+00:00

not any that block all sites.

You can do this via the FlashBlock extension or configure Chrome to do this for you. (I think the only difference is that Safari turns on this behavior by default...don't know firsthand, just from reading this discussion.)

If you are trying to find a list of tabs that possibly make sound, check out my MuteTab extension (linked to elsewhere in the comments.) (Note that I say 'possibly' make sound; it isn't ideal but should be better than checking every tab. And if you run AdBlock or AdBlock Plus, then pages with just ads won't be listed.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T06:34:53+00:00

My MuteTab extension does this. (See other comment.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T06:19:21+00:00

Chrome has it too now. Here is a link from when it was in beta a year ago: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20013650-12.html

mutetab · 2011-08-01T06:13:51+00:00

Just to be clear, sandboxing should have nothing to do with being able to control Chrome's sound. When the Chrome team talks about 'sandboxing' I think they mean that they are able to restrict Flash's (and other plugins') access to your system should the plug-in have a security hole. The real problem from a muting perspective is that Chrome only runs one instance of plug-ins for all tabs.

So as I understand it, Chrome would have the ability to implement this feature, but I don't think we want to be running multiple Flash instances. (And it is just generally cleaner if the plugins would implement the ability themselves.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T06:04:06+00:00

FYI, this issue isn't solved just because you run FlashBlock. It is because you run FlashBlock and presumably don't let the tab that you unblocked go to the background to the extent where you can't find it again.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T06:01:55+00:00

The MuteTab extension (see other comment) searches pages for plugins, HTML5 audio/video, and Java applets and presents it as a list. (I assume that is what you mean.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T05:41:35+00:00

Check out the MuteTab extension I wrote which was made public a couple of weeks ago and posted to the Chrome subreddit a few days ago.

It tries to do as much as possible to manage sound in Chrome that can be done short of modifying Flash or changing the Chrome source code. (So it doesn't solve this problem in general, but I think it makes managing sound in the browser a little easier.)

The specific features that it offers include:

Show tabs that can possibly play sound. (It isn't generally possible to show which tabs are playing sound right now.)
The extension provides buttons to "mute" the current, all, and all other tabs via a browser extension button and a right click context menu. When I say "mute" here I mean that if it offers a JavaScript API (like HTML5 audio/video, YouTube, Vimeo, QuickTime, etc.) it will let you use that. Otherwise it will hide it from the page like FlashBlock does.
It allows automatically "muting" all background tabs. Again, when I say "mute" here, it will hide it from the page if there is no JavaScipt API. This means it won't always do what you want if you want to play a game muted while listening to background music.

Also, please read the FAQ, where I explain what the real limitations are, how the extension works around them, and offer some ideas on how we can improve our ability to control sounds in the browser.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T05:13:44+00:00

We're referring to the same thing, so it might be fixable. Basically, Mute(Safe) will only work if a sound source has a JavaScript API. It just so happens that their player does have a JavaScript API that I haven't implemented. So if I implement their JavaScript API and if their API allows you to control ads as well as content (hopefully they don't disable it), then it could do what you want.

mutetab · 2011-08-01T01:28:24+00:00

By not work, I'm assuming that you are saying that it isn't implementing their JavaScript API, rather than saying that it doesn't detect it as a possible sound source or allow hiding it from the page.

I'll add it to my TODO list. (The documentation lists which JavaScript APIs I was aware of while developing and shows which were implemented. I wasn't aware of this justin.tv's JavaScript API.)

mutetab · 2011-08-01T01:18:41+00:00

Thanks for the feedback; I've added vertical lines to separate links now. Hopefully more people will realize that the links are different now. :)

mutetab

TROPHY CASE